Falling Off The Wagon

Colleen at Chasing Ray had an interesting post a couple of days ago about her writing projects and how they're going. She's working on two projects--a YA urban fantasy and a memoir. I'm working on two projects, too--a middle-grade science fiction thing and a collection of essays. (Yeah, like those sell so well.) Colleen has been feeling stuck, but for the last couple of weeks I've been feeling as if I'm finally getting into a writing groove.

I was in the process of giving up my dependence on a lengthy morning ritual that involved surfing the net for a couple of hours in favor of some tricks. I was doing far better with free-writing than I've done in the past (even though I think it's the key to everything) and that free-writing was involving outlining. I mean, I really need to have some idea what I'm going to say.

However, if the beginning of my workday is upset in some way, I'm usually wrecked until I can sleep it off. And if the beginning of my workweek is upset, it can be hard for me to pull myself together until the following Monday, no matter how much I sleep.

This week, the plumber was here on Tuesday.

It wasn't the worst week I've ever had by a longshot. I made some progress on the middle-grade story and totally revised one and a half essays. But today I really fell off the wagon and was checking my e-mail all day (I've been limiting myself to three times a day this week) and constantly doing my ritual rotation through a couple of news sites, Salon and Slate. Really, they do sometimes put up new material during the day.

Fortunately, I am not beating myself up about this because I'm an evolutionary person, not a revolutionary. I don't expect change over night. Or in one day. Or one week. If I live long enough, I'm going to get a handle on this writing thing.